Bk XII:579-628 The death of Achilles. But the god of the trident, who rules the ocean waters, grieved, with a father's feelings, for the son changed into a swan, the bird of Phaethon, and, hating fierce Achilles, he nursed an excessive anger in his memory. And now, when the war against Troy had lasted for almost ten years, he called to Sminthean Apollo, the unshorn, in these words: "O, by far the best loved of my brother's sons, who built the walls of Troy with me, to no purpose, do you sigh at all to see these battlements at the moment of their destruction? Do you grieve at all that so many thousands died defending her walls? Not to name all of them, does not the shade come before you of Hector, dragged round his own citadel, Pergama? But savage Achilles, crueller than war itself, is still alive, ravager of our creation. Let him be given up to me. I would let him feel what I can do with my three-pronged spear: but since I am not allowed to meet face to face with the enemy, destroy him unexpectedly with a hidden arrow!" The Delian god nodded, and satisfying his own and his uncle's desire, he came to the Trojan lines, wrapped in a cloud, and there, among human massacre, he saw Paris firing infrequent shafts at unknown Greeks. Showing himself as a god, he said: "Why waste your arrows on the blood of the rank and file? If you care for your own, aim at Achilles, grandson of Aeacus, and avenge your dead brothers!" He spoke, and, pointing to Pelides, who, with his weapon, was strewing the ground with Trojan bodies, he turned Paris's bow towards him, and guided the unerring shaft with deadly hand. This was the one thing that could delight old Priam since Hector's death. So, Achilles, conqueror of so much greatness, you are conquered, by the cowardly thief of the wife of a Greek! If your death had to be by a woman's hand, in war, you would rather have fallen to an Amazon's two-edged axe. Now Achilles, grandson of Aeacus, the terror of the Phrygians, the glory and defence of the Pelasgian name, the invincible captain in battle, was burned: one god, Vulcan, armed him, and that same god consumed him. Now he is ash, and little if anything remains of Achilles, once so mighty, hardly enough to fill an urn. But his fame lives, enough to fill a world. That equals the measure of the man, and, in that, the son of Peleus is truly himself, and does not know the void of Tartarus. So that you might know whose it was, even his shield makes war: and arms, for his arms, are raised. Diomede, son of Tydeus, and the lesser Ajax, Oileus's son, dare not claim them, nor the younger son of Atreus, Menelaüs, nor the elder, Agamemnon, greater in warfare, nor the rest. Only Ajax, the son of Telamon, and Ulysses, Laërtes's son, were confident enough for such glory. Agamemnon, the descendant of Tantalus, in order to escape the invidious burden of choosing between them, ordered the leaders of the Greeks to meet in the middle of the camp, and he transferred judgment of the dispute to them. |
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